The Painter's Daughters
The award-winning debut novel selected for BBC Radio 2 Book Club
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
THE NUMBER ONE KINDLE BESTSELLER
SELECTED FOR THE BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB
WINNER OF THE MSLEXIA NOVEL COMPETITION
'Beautifully written . . . I raced through it' HILARY MANTEL
'As exquisitely and tenderly rendered as a Gainsborough painting' TRACY CHEVALIER
'A wonderfully powerful and haunting novel with a hugely gripping plot' DEBORAH MOGGACH
'A rich evocation of secrets, art, sisterhood and class' i PAPER
1759, Ipswich. Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly has had a tendency to forget who she is, to fall into confusion, and Peggy knows instinctively that no one must find out.
When the family move to Bath, Thomas Gainsborough finds fame as a portrait artist, while his daughters are thrown into the whirl of polite society. Here, the merits of marriage and codes of behaviour are crystal clear, and secrets much harder to keep. As Peggy goes to greater lengths to protect her sister, she finds herself falling in love, and their precarious situation is soon thrown catastrophically off-course. The discovery of a betrayal forces her to question all she has done for Molly - and whether any one person can truly change the fate of another . . .
Inspired by true events and told with irresistible vibrancy and wit, Emily Howes' award-winning debut is a captivating and deeply moving novel about art, sisterhood and the price we pay for love.
'Vividly imagined and exquisitely brought to the page' RACHEL JOYCE
'A beautiful debut' JO BROWNING WROE
'An incredible first novel that'll leave you scouring the real-life paintings for clues' STYLIST
'Fascinating' WASHINGTON POST
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychotherapist and sketch comedy writer Howes (The Ladies) portrays sisterhood, family secrets, and mental illness in her intricate and vibrant debut. The novel takes place in late-18th-century Ipswich, England, where as young girls, Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are given free rein by their emotionally absent painter father and corralled by their society-conscious mother. Molly's bouts of sleepwalking, blackouts, and memory loss have been increasing in frequency, despite Peggy's attempts to help her sister in an era when mental illness was viewed as witchcraft and loved ones were shipped to asylums. Terrified of separation, Peggy shoulders the burden of her sister's episodes alone, a responsibility that becomes even heavier when the girls are 12 and 13 and the family moves to Bath, where they must make a good impression so their father can bring in customers for portraits. The novel is rife with secrets—including a past the sisters' mother refuses to speak about, forbidden lovers, and the mysterious interwoven story of an innkeeper's daughter and her abusive father—but the Gainsboroughs persevere through illness and betrayal. Though a rushed ending feels out of sync with the carefully laid details of the sisters' lives, Howes excels in her depiction of truth and rumors. Readers will want to linger in this singular world.
Customer Reviews
Broad canvas
The author is a British psychotherapist, who has written award winning short fiction, and sketch comedy for the stage. This is her first novel.
The setting is early-to-mid-18th century England. The protagonists Mary (aka Molly) and Margaret (aka Peggy) Gainsborough, daughters of the painter Thomas, are 10 and 9 and living in rural Suffolk (near Ipswich) when the narrative commences. The sisters, who were frequent subjects in their father’s works, are devoted to each other. Though younger, Peggy “takes care of” Molly, who suffers from a mysterious episodic neurological illness. At the instigation of their mother, the family moves to Bath to enhance Thomas’s career (and income) and pursue the social improvement Mom, the illegitimate daughter of a nobleman, desires for her girls. Stuff happens, much of it lifted directly from the biography of Gainsborough although Ms Howes admits she fabricates an affair for Thomas and moves the timelines of other events around to fit with her plot.
Twin third person narratives unfold in alternate chapters: one by Peggy, the other by the girls’ presumptive grand-mother twenty or so years earlier which suggests the aforementioned nobleman was actually Frederick of Hanover, the Prince of Wales.
Though estranged from his own father George II, it was Frederick’s son who became George III (Google it), as in the Madness of King George. Ms Howes implies that her Molly Gainsborough inherited whatever the Mad King had, which has long been said to be acute intermittent porphyria. (Molly does pass something that might or might not have been blue in the chamberpot at one stage.)
Whether George III actually had porphyria is moot. Many so-called experts nowadays reckon he was bipolar. For what it’s worth, Molly’s “episodes” as described by Ms Howes sounded more like complex partial seizures to me, while the latter stages of her illness could have been depression. The wily spirochete can’t be discounted either.
Whatever the case, Ms Howes paints a vivid portrait of the period, and a moving one of sisterly love. No less a luminary than Hilary Mantel described the book as “beautifully written.” (See footnote).
Who am I to argue? Indeed, the prose more than makes up for the quibbles I have about plot: (1) I thought Ms H tried too hard to get the porphyria in, and (2) I would have liked to see more about Gainsborough’s rivalry with Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Footnote
Yes, I know Ms Mantel died in 2022, but an earlier draft of The Painter’s Daughters won a prize for unpublished manuscript in 2021.